


Here Lies Defiance

by journeycat



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Non-canon character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/journeycat/pseuds/journeycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for Military Week at Goldenlake in September of 2010. Inspired by Tamora Pierce stating Cleon's sister may have been disinherited for fleeing the convent and joining the Riders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Lies Defiance

Defiance is so easily misunderstood, when one thinks about it.

And Loara has, over and over again, until defiance is etched into her bones, until she is convinced that when she dies her ashes will spell out the word where she bleeds. Here lies defiance, the earth will read, and her mother will spit on her grave and her father will roll in his. But at least when she dies, she will not die in a bed on some distant husband’s estates, be it from old age or from laboring through a woman’s duty.

_I will die_ , Loara thinks fiercely, _as a free woman_.

When one thinks defiance, one sees a young blaze of red righteous sun, easily quelled by the looming power of moonlit wisdom. _I know what’s right for me_ , the blaze would say, but the old moon would say, _No, you are but a child who burns too hot too fast_. And the moon would be right, because it encompasses the quiet serenity of the elders, who know everything. And the sun would be wrong, because it is the impetuousness of a rash youth who knows so little.

That is always how it goes. A daughter falls hard for the neighboring fief’s cocky son, and her mother will say, _Darling, he’s wicked, he’s not for you_. But she won’t listen, and she follows him, and she gets her heart broken in that lesson well learned. The father may or may not welcome his submissive child back, her belly already swelling with the spawn of a careless man, but she won’t forget what her mother had told her.

A son says, _Father, our men must do this to capture those bandits, I know this tactic will work!_ but the father is wiser and disagrees. He himself has chased bandits scores of years before, but he’s too old now, so he tells his son exactly how to do it and waits for him back at the fief. But the son, so confident in his new tactics, uses those instead. The bandits escape with blood on their clever hands, and he and what men are left flee back to the fief. Those men he will one day lead may or may not trust him again, but he won’t forget what his father had told him.

A daughter joins the Queen’s Riders, and her mother howls her fury, her father banishes her and dies not long after—

(“I hope you’re happy, you bitch,” the mother says. “You’ve killed your father with your petty rebellion!”)

—and the daughter is left adrift, weeping.

Defiance: when children stand up on their own and are pushed back down.

Sometimes, though, they can stand proud.

Loara tightens the last of her buckles, cinching them tight around her solemn pony’s belly. He is a sturdy little fellow, and out of all the new recruits, he had picked her immediately. Sensing, somehow, they were meant for each other.

“Those Scanran bastards thought they could sneak in the back way,” Commander Evin calls, his grin wide and fierce, “so let’s give them a grand welcome, shall we?”

His Riders roar their assent, and as the first of the Scanrans begin to appear in the small, nondescript pass that winds through the snowy mountains on the Tortallan-Scanran border, they charge. It is a large scouting party with plans to raid nearby villages and gather information about the landscape, which they will take back to their army that follows several days behind. Spiderdeath, Twelfth Group, will dominate this party and hold them back until the Own or Army, whichever comes first, arrive.

And Loara Defiance, who was once known as Loara of Kennan before she was disinherited, before she fled the convent and joined the Riders and took this new name, is now on the front lines, ready to die for Tortall and ready to live for it.

Whether she dies today or in seventy years, she knows what her grave will say.

Here lies Defiance: the body of a free woman.


End file.
